Xbox One sales double in US after disconnecting Kinect

Last month Microsoft uncoupled the Xbox One from Kinect, and Microsoft says that since then console sales have doubled in the US.

Dropping Kinect from the baseline Xbox One bundle seems to have been a good move, as sales have doubled in the US since the new Kinect-free deal went on sale on 9 June.

“Since the new Xbox One offering launched on June 9, we've seen sales of Xbox One more than double in the US, compared to sales in May,” reads an official statement published by CVG.

Using such recent sales data means it’s probably not desperately reliable, but Microsoft says it based its findings on “internal data based on retail calendar and sold through numbers.”

The Kinect-free Xbox One costs $399 in the US, or £349 in the UK.

While an obvious attraction to the ultra-mainstream buyer, other bundles arguably offer better value. The Xbox One Titanfall bundle includes a game and the Kinect for just £40 extra.

There are other reported benefits of disabling Kinect, though.

Last month, Microsoft Xbox’s director of software engineering claimed disabling Kinect frees-up 10 per cent of GPU power, which could be used to help the Xbox One get up to speed with the PS4.

To date, many games run at a higher resolution on Sony’s console.

Back in March 2014, it was revealed that an Xbox One price drop had caused the Microsoft console to outsell the PS4 for four weeks in a row – a similar effect to what we’re seeing here – but the PS4 is believed to still have sold significantly more units.

As of March 2014, the PS4 had sold six million units to the Xbox One’s four million or so.